Apple's Steve Jobs during a live press conference in San Francisco currently going on (at 10AM PST today, Tuesday, Sept. 12th) just announced a feature on iPods that will be sure to please audio enthusiasts -- GAPLESS PLAYBACK!

More details to follow. New iPods to be released. Please update this thread as the new iPods and GAPLESS info is released. This is taken from a live IRC transcript with iLounge reporters inside the Apple news event today.

See below for later posts for details on new iTunes 7, new iPod models/pricing/features, larger iPod video format, new set top wireless mac mini-like box for audio/video and more from this Apple press event.

You can now sync between multiple computers using an iPod, as long as both are authorized on the same account.

Movie store: 75 near DVD image quality (640x480) Movies now from iTunes. Dolby surround audio. Same day availability as DVD. Pre-order with one click. Most titles will be 9.99. New releases 12.99 preorders and first week, after that up to 14.99. New titles added every week. U.S. now, International in 2007.

No need to download new songs for gapless to work.

NFL football added to iTunes. Whole 2006 season added today: 1.99 per game or 24.99 for whole season (season pass).

Set top box (for video/audio) like Mac Mini to be released 1Q 2007... Will be wireless. Will tenatively be called iTV. 1/2 size of Mac Mini, built-in power supply, USB, Ethernet, 802.11 "wireless component video", optical audio and HDMI ports, plus old RCA stereo audio ports. Works with Apple Remote. Video looks very close to DVD quality even on a huge theater sized projector. Video access is instantaneous, looks like watching a DVD. iTV lets you get access to trailers and iTunes store selected content from internet. iTV box works with Mac or PC and is priced at $299!

Question is: Do they comply with already existant quasi standards (LAME header, Nero AAC/MP4 gapless solution) or do they use a proprietary solution?

The newer versions of iTunes detects which version of LAME that was used to encode by reading the LAME header instead of the "Encoder Settings" tag that LAME also writes. It is possible that the new ipods will use the LAME header or they could be using a gapless DSP hack.

Hhmm... interesting... it's not just analyzing AAC, MP3 as well.Under 'Get info' of a song you can select "Part of a gapless album" under the 'Options' tab.

Edit:OK, I can confirm it now. Gapless playback works for both AAC and MP3, even made with previous version of the encoders (Lame 3.92 for instance). No evidence of crossfading, appears to be the genuine stuff.

It is an interesting question though whether all older Nano's and 5G's will get gapless. I guess they will because there is supposed to be a firmware update for them that introduces the other introduced new stuff. I doubt they made two version of the same firmware with just gapless as the difference between the older and newer versions.

Is it possible for you to encode some samples with iTunes AAC encoder (and eventually the MP3 one), just to see if the bundled encoders are also gapless?Here is a small sample collection of my own which makes potential gap very easy to spot.Ideally, I'd like to see if the resulting files would play gaplessly not only on iTunes but also with another player (especially foobar2000, which supports AAC gapless playback for years with compatible encoders).

Is it possible for you to encode some samples with iTunes AAC encoder (and eventually the MP3 one), just to see if the bundled encoders are also gapless?Here is a small sample collection of my own which makes potential gap very easy to spot.Ideally, I'd like to see if the resulting files would play gaplessly not only on iTunes but also with another player (especially foobar2000, which supports AAC gapless playback for years with compatible encoders).

I just tried itunes 7. It scans and adds gapless playback info onto its database. I only tried a few tracks on it, so far the gapless playback works on itunes 7 but the tracktime VBR problem is still there and it is a huge resource hog uses about 40MB and 6 percent CPU power just to decode a MP3 . Does not use external album artwork and you need have the album artwork tagged (which is a waste of space and time)

EDIT: The Non-Itunes AAC decoder bug still on the latest version of Quicktime

Anyway I only spent five minutes with it and i removed like it was a virus

Question is: Do they comply with already existant quasi standards (LAME header, Nero AAC/MP4 gapless solution) or do they use a proprietary solution?

Steve said:

"You might be listening to Abbey Road or Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and one track doesn't flow seamlessly into the next. We are going to put this back together as it was intended and offer Gapless Playback for songs encoded with MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless."

I just tried itunes 7. It scans and adds gapless playback info onto its database. I only tried a few tracks on it, so far the gapless playback works on itunes 7 but the tracktime VBR problem is still there and it is a huge resource hog uses about 40MB and 6 percent CPU power just to decode a MP3 . Does not use external album artwork and you need have the album artwork tagged (which is a waste of space and time)

Anyway I only spent five minutes with it and i removed like it was a virus

Well i dont know what sort of cpu you're running but its only using between 5-6% CPU to play a 128kbps AAC on my old old old 1ghz G4.

I just tried itunes 7. It scans and adds gapless playback info onto its database. I only tried a few tracks on it, so far the gapless playback works on itunes 7 but the tracktime VBR problem is still there and it is a huge resource hog uses about 40MB and 6 percent CPU power just to decode a MP3 . Does not use external album artwork and you need have the album artwork tagged (which is a waste of space and time)

Anyway I only spent five minutes with it and i removed like it was a virus

Well i dont know what sort of cpu you're running but its only using between 5-6% CPU to play a 128kbps AAC on my old old old 1ghz G4.

I was using that bloatwared player on a Athlon 2000+ with 512MB. It was using about 6% CPU to decode a LAME APS MP3 and using about 100% to render + scroll on the screen it was like browsing the web with a crappy 2D VGA card without even 2D accelaration.